Where am I?     Home / Resources / Meeting Reports / Spring Membership Meeting 2002 / HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria Global Fund

HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria Global Fund
Ruth Hope (PLAN International)

The Transitional Working Group to Establish a Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria (TWG)’s first meeting was held recently in Brussels under pressure to get the fund up and running by February 2002 and the disbursements over by Spring 2002. In consequence, an NGO Consultation was organized and held.

The UK NGO AIDS Consortium (the Consortium) stepped in to assist the Technical Support Secretariat (TSS) provided by the Italian Government. Also, the Global Health Council informally seconded Mary Partlow as a consultant to assist the TWG. Despite the rapid organisation, the invitation to nominate participants resulted in an overwhelming number of nominees and the final list of invitations was almost exclusively restricted to persons representing NGO coalitions, alliances, and networks.

There were 70 participants representing NGO collaborations/networks/alliances; plus Roll Back Malaria; various activist rapporteurs to the TWG; and a good representation of access to care groups. MSH was contracted to provide 4 facilitators for the discussion groups. Ruth participated on behalf of The CORE Group. Including Ruth, there were only four participants with a children and young people’s focus – though there were ‘sympathisers’ with wider remits.

Further background details can be found in the archived Break-the-Silence (BTS) messages on http://www.hdnet.org. Briefing papers were prepared by the TWG and also by the Consortium which will be posted on BTS.

After background briefing, there were presentations on each of the briefing papers, then the meetings broke into working groups addressing each issue, followed by plenary. It was stated that the intention was not to develop consensus but to identify broad NGO supported issues.

However, on the second day, there were decisions made on whether or not issues should be included in the recommendations papers, using a show of hands. Not a vote – there was no show of hands for who disagreed nor who abstained. Yet many other issues were put straight onto the recommendations without any indication of how wide the support was. Young people, orphans, and vulnerable children were clearly not on the agenda. Inter-sectoral responses to AIDS/TB/Malaria were clearly not on the agenda – only high impact biomedical interventions.

A recommendations paper to the TWG “Key Recommendations from NGO GFATM Consultation” was published on Break The Silence, 14 November 2001. A virtual M&E group will continue to discuss outcome indicators for the Fund.

Those of us concerned with young people and children could not have done more to raise the issues of prevention, care and mitigation without actually being disruptive of the process. However, youth and children were clearly not on the agenda. (Continued next page)

Hence we decided the best way forward was to participate in the set agenda but organize an urgent call for action by those concerned with youth and children, which has been shared with The CORE Group. It is also going out through the OVC TF; Break the Silence; and the UK NGO AIDS Consortium mailing list. Footnote: Ruth took CORE Malaria documents to Brussels. These were the only malaria documents available and were in high demand.

Dr. Ruth Hope (Specialist in General Practice, postgraduate qualifications in Paediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, and Family Planning) joined PLAN International in 1999. Ruth undertook research into traditional beliefs and practices in pregnancy and childbirth in Zimbabwe, where she provided training and counseling for trainers of TBAs. She then gained considerable field level and project management experience in Nepal, before returning to the UK to design and manage health projects for the British Council and its associates world-wide, including Project Director supporting primary health care (The Bamako Initiative), in 10 States in Nigeria. Ruth then spent 4 years as Programme Director for the Keele University, MBA [Health, Population and Nutrition in Developing Countries] programme where she taught policy, planning, and management; health education, marketing, and community participation; and the Population/Reproductive health content of the curriculum; as well as undertaking consultancy for the British Government, European Commission and others. For 5 years, Ruth worked as medical officer to a young people's contraception and sexual health clinic in a deprived inner city area in the North of England. Ruth has also undertaken numerous consultancies around the world, including Review Team Leader of an NGO reproductive health project in Ghana for DFID; an EC study on public-private partnership in health in Zambia; community health/safe motherhood project design for a private-not-for-profit hospital in Egypt; and project design for NGO RH projects in West Bank and Gaza for DFID.

Since joining PLAN, Ruth has worked as Senior Reproductive Health Adviser to the NGO Networks Projects with field activities in Vietnam, Armenia, Nicaragua, and Malawi. She is currently based in the PLAN International Washington Office where she supports PLAN staff globally in FP/RH capacity building and programming. Ruth was on the design team for the Hope for African Children Initiative, an HIV/AIDS project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she participated in the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS in 2001 preparing and presenting statements on Children and HIV, and she serves as a Co-Chairperson of the CORE HIV/AIDS Working Group.